I just finished an incredible little three-day solo trip get-away Retreat to the wonderful, tiny, little, town of Hot Springs, North Carolina. And, I am just bursting to encourage and challenge you to find a way to make rest a part of your life in a greater way than you are resting already. Whether that is stealing little moments in your day, or an hour in your day for rest, or what we have begun practicing on a regular basis this year as a family which is a one day a week rest like a Sabbath, or do a little solo retreat.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to rest. And, how vital it is to have time to reflect and look back on the path you’ve taken and where you’ve come. Resting affords you time to look back on your journey and see how far you have come, and what you have traversed, and the difficulties you’ve overcome.
If you want to live with the least amount of regrets in life you have to make time to reflect. When you reflect you can see what you would change, and what you would do different. And, when you do that it also gives you an opportunity to look forward and imagine the future. When you make time to look forward you can dream what your life would be life like if you could create anything. You can ask yourself if anything were possible what would you do, who would you be, where would you live, and what kind of impact and legacy would you leave in the world?
This solo trip was a time for me to reflect and do some “visioneering” as I like to call it. “Visioneering” for me means to be the architect of your dreams. As it was, I providentially didn’t have any cell service in this tiny little town. (I can’t say anyone also will have that issue but for whatever reason I did with my cell carrier). But, it really underscored for me the need and the time to just distance myself from outside voices and influences and really get clear on a lot of things about family, about my life, who I want to be, and business, and the impact that I want to make in the world.
Through the years I’ve tried to make rest a part of my life. But, I haven’t always succeeded at it. It was much easier to carve out that time when I was single. Because for we were definitely for many years in our marriage in very real survival mode first as we committed to the path of entrepreneurship and started three small businesses from the ground up and then five years later when everything we built burned to the ground in a fire.
One of the great images and metaphors that has always reminded me of how important rest is was found on an experience that I had years ago. I have done a number of paddling trips in the Southwest, and one of them was on the San Juan river. The river runs through an area known as the Four Corners, which is the corners of the four states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. So, I don’t even remember exactly which state I was in when this happened or where on the river. I was on a 12 or 14-day paddling trip and we had arranged to spend three full days in rest as a group at one particular camp. We wouldn’t be moving camp, just resting. And, the instructor of this course that I was part of in college ended up doing a demonstration. It was the Monsoon Season, and it was late August or early September. And, the Monsoon Season in the Southwest means that there is rain somewhere every day. And, that rain is being dumped into all the rivers. The dirt in the Southwest is a very, very, fine silt. And, those rivers are as dirty as you can imagine.
Every day on the paddling trip in order to get our drinking water we had had to filter the water with water filters. And, it was very important to protect the water filters so that they weren’t over stressed. So, when we would get into camp at night we would fill five gallon buckets of water and let the water settle out overnight. And, in the mornings we would pump the the water to fill our canteens and water bottles and have water for cooking. So, we had all seen how much silt settled out of the water in a 12 or 16 hour period overnight. It was pretty significant.
When we got into camp for this three-day full days of rest our instructor arranged to set up three designated 5-gallon buckets that were going to be set aside for a little experiment or demonstration. And, so the first day he filled one of the buckets full of water and covered it. The next day he filled another bucket and covered it. And, the third day he filled a bucket and covered it. Then, before we left on our final day (after our 4th night in that camp), the instructor began to uncover these buckets. He took the lid off the bucket that had been at rest for 24-hours and incredibly there was about a 1/4″ (0.65 cms) of silt that had settled out into the bottom of this bucket. Then he took the lid off the second bucket and amazingly it was even more clear. There must have been a 1/2″ (1.25 cms) of of silt that had settled out the water in the bucket. Then the last day he finally took the lid off the third bucket. At that point, I really couldn’t have imagined more silt could have settled out of the water in that bucket. But, by golly, there was probably at that point 3/4″ (1.85 cms) of silt that had settled out of the water in the bucket. It was incredible.
I think that metaphor is so fitting for our lives. Most of the time when we have “rested” we haven’t even begun to rest. I know it can take some resources, and planning, and an effort to create the space and time for rest. Wherever you are at in life I encourage you to find a way to do this and apply this lesson in your life.
If you can create space and time to rest, you’ll be amazed at the power of what even a short rest can produce in your life and the clarity you will gain. I challenge you to make the time to get a 24-hour rest or 48 or 72 hours and see how life-changing it can be.
